UT
Southwestern Medical Center brings together the latest research and therapies
to offer patients compassionate, comprehensive care for migraines.

At UT
Southwestern, we recognize that migraine care is not one size fits all. We
tailor each patient’s treatment to meet his or her unique needs.

Compassionate Care for Migraine
Relief

Migraines are the most common
type of disabling headache
and a leading cause of missed workdays and lost productivity. Approximately 15 to 20
percent of the population is affected (18 percent of women, 6 percent of men
and children). After puberty, the headaches are three times more common in
women than men.

Migraine
headaches in adults usually last for hours, but sometimes they last for days.
The visual or neurological symptoms can last between seconds and hours but
usually last less than 45 minutes. These symptoms can become permanent. Migraines
in young children are briefer, usually lasting less than two hours.

Activity
usually makes migraine symptoms worse, so most people prefer to lie down in a
dark, quiet room and can often get relief with sleep.

Headache
specialists at UT Southwestern combine the latest research and therapies to
offer people with migraines relief from their symptoms and reduce migraine frequency.

Symptoms

Migraines
can produce many kinds of visual or neurological symptoms, which are caused by
transient inflammation of vessels, dilation of blood vessels, and abnormal
firing of nerve cells in the brain. These symptoms sometimes develop in
progression – for example, a person might develop numbness on the face that
resolves, then weakness of the arm that resolves, then flashing lights. Some
people know “it will be a migraine day” because of tiredness, excessive energy,
mood changes, yawning, or food cravings that precede the actual migraine
symptoms.

Symptoms
of a migraine vary from person to person. They include any of the following, as
well as other, less common symptoms:

Pain: Headaches are
the best-known feature of migraine, although it is possible to have a migraine
without having headaches. The headaches usually start as a mild ache, often on
one side of the head. The pain gradually increases in intensity and becomes
throbbing or pounding in nature.

Visual disturbances: The most common
visual symptoms are flashing lights, zig-zag lines, “heat waves,” stars, blurring,
or other disturbances of vision. Some people experience loss of vision in one
eye, tunnel vision, double vision, or complete loss of vision. The visual
symptoms often begin gradually and fade away.

In
addition to these classic symptoms, many people also experience:

Diarrhea

Loss of appetite

Nausea

Sensitivity to noise

Sensitivity to odors

Vomiting

There is
also an association between migraine and some medical conditions, such as:

Anxiety

Asthma

Bipolar disorder

Depression

Epilepsy

Fibromyalgia

Motion sickness

Raynaud’s phenomenon

Diagnosis

Migraine
headaches often run in families, and knowing about other family members’
headaches is often helpful for the diagnosis and treatment of the condition. If
a patient’s symptoms are typical for migraine and the neurological exam is
normal, usually no additional tests are needed to make a diagnosis,
particularly if there is a family history of migraine.

If a
patient’s symptoms are not typical, or the headaches develop later in life, a
brain scan and other tests might be recommended to rule out other conditions,
such as vascular disease or blood clots from the neck or heart.

The key
to successful management of migraine is communication between patient and
physician. UT Southwestern specialists work with each patient to come up with a
solution
that works for the individual.